[1] Both parents were intercollegiate athletes at Arizona State University in Tempe; his father played basketball and his mother swam.

[6] Keller also competed in the 400-meter freestyle, placing fifth behind Chad Carvin, Erik Vendt, Uğur Taner, and Mark Warkentin.

[8] In the 5k open water race at the 1999 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, Keller won gold with a time of 55:42.

[1] Keller left USC after his sophomore season, when he went professional, forfeiting his final two years of collegiate sports eligibility.

[14] Afterward, he trained until 2007 at Club Wolverine, run at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, under Jon Urbanchek and later Bob Bowman.

[17] Late into his swimming career, Keller cited Urbanchek as his greatest influence, remarking, "He's the type of man I want to be like when I'm older.

[1] He also won the summer 2002 national title in the 400 meter freestyle and was named to the United States Swimming "All-Star Team".

[1] During the 4×200-meter freestyle relay at the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004, Keller held off a charging Ian Thorpe in the anchor leg to win the race by 0.13 seconds.

[19] In January 2016, Andy Ross of the magazine Swimming World named it as one of the greatest Olympic relays of all-time.

[27] The American relay of Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Peter Vanderkaay, and Keller were undefeated in competition from those Olympics onward.

[citation needed] Vanderkaay, Larsen Jensen, Erik Vendt, and Keller made up the core of the premier American mid-distance/distance freestyle swimmers.[when?

[1] In 2005, he won the summer national title in the 400 meter freestyle and was on the United States swimming "All-Star" team.

[1][5] In 2007, Keller left Ann Arbor and returned to USC to finish school and train with the Trojan Swim Club under coach Dave Salo.

He finally received a degree in public policy and real estate development, having attended both USC and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti east of Ann Arbor.

[35][34] From October 2009 through November 2010, Keller worked at the Ann Arbor, Michigan office of Northwestern Mutual Investment Services.

[10] The SwimSwam reporter who broke the story commented in the article that the firm "seemed unaware of the Capitol video or Keller's possible involvement" in the attack.

[43] On January 12, 2021, Hoff & Leigh released a statement saying that Keller no longer worked for the company, having resigned, and that they did not condone his actions.

[17][10][43] He was recognized, in part, because of his height, the fact that he was wearing a U.S. Olympic team jacket, and that his face was unobstructed in the video.

After that date, the judge's orders allowed him to travel to Washington, D.C., for court appearances and to meet with lawyers, but required him to ask permission before making any trips to North Carolina, where his children live.

[54][55][56][57] On September 29, 2021, as part of a plea bargain, Keller pleaded guilty to a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding before Congress.

", captured video and photographs, and "jerked his elbow" to avoid law enforcement officers that were trying to eject him from the building.

[58] He admitted that he later destroyed a phone and a memory card which he had brought with him to the Capitol, and threw away the jacket he wore at the time.

[63] On June 15, 2023, Keller requested a postponement of his sentencing hearing so he could "further facilitate" his cooperation with the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack.

[67] Ahead of the 2004 Summer Olympics, Keller reportedly suffered a period of insomnia and malaise, which resulted in an "emotional breakdown".

[70][71][72] After his participation in the storming of the United States Capitol, friends of Keller's described him as a strong political conservative and a gun enthusiast, who had expressed increasingly strong support for Donald Trump on his social media in the previous years, particularly in the year immediately prior.

[17][34] Keller had previously attended the "Million MAGA March", a pro-Trump 2020–21 United States election protest held in Washington D.C., in late November 2020.

During their honeymoon, while on a pontoon boat off the coast of Florida in Choctawhatchee Bay, Keller rescued an 18-year old high school student from drowning after a severe jet ski crash.

Keller, who witnessed the accident from the boat, swam to the unconscious teenager and performed lifesaving measures while keeping him above water.